One Hundred Percent
by Baroness Emma
Summary: Nyota is a single mother of two. One day, she meets a guy who is totally different from all her previous experiences with men. But can an alien REALLY earn her trust? Academy AU.


**A/N** \- An extension of the the drabble "**Two**" from my drabble series "**Seven Is the Number Of Perfection**". If you read that one first, be warned, it contains a ton of spoilers for this story. Also, be aware of the rating! There are some serious themes here, and some angst. If you are very young, or very sensitive to triggers, please skip this one. There will be nothing graphic, and this is slash-free territory.

* * *

For: Psicygni, bellasblush, Nyotarules, Wudelfin, Firefly-class, and everyone else who wanted more Nyota as a single parent. Sorry you had to wait over a year, but inspiration is one of those finicky kinds of things. . . Here's looking at you, kids. ;)

Enjoy!

* * *

**One Hundred Percent**

The moment she first sees him, he scores an abysmal 9%.

He's sitting there, _alone_ in a Starfleet approved daycare center, taking notes on his PADD. Occasionally, he looks up, and observes the playing children, then takes more notes. He is dressed semi-casually, not at all like an inspector or a tradesman.

He is also an alien.

Cold dread pools in her stomach.

The pointed ears don't fool her - so many non-Human races have pointed ears that it is almost common for some to claim Vulcan ancestry when in fact, they have none.

She knows it happens. It has happened to her.

Not every alien comes in peace.

She hates herself for feeling like that, but he still goes down to 7%.

He stands up then, his posture almost aggressively straight, his expression one of frightening insight and depth. He walks towards her.

She quickly pushes Kaliah and Senek behind her legs.

His gaze shifts momentarily. To her kids.

He quickly drops to a 1%. 10% is red-line, but 1% is an emergency. She starts to fumble for her comm., intending to call the authorities.

_At once_.

"I am conducting a behavioral study of children of members of Starfleet, in hopes of aiding in the most recent attempt to design starships that can accomodate families."

He states this, in a perfectly calm, rational tone, almost as if she had asked.

She pauses, her comm. open, at the ready.

"I am an empath," he continues, tilting his head as though he had _heard_ her thoughts. "And you were projecting your disapproval rather strongly just now. I felt it wise to explain."

Very slowly, he goes back up to a 9%. He has not claimed a Vulcan heritage, he has only mentioned an empathic ability.

Since she has not yet said a word, and he is responding perfectly to her thoughts, she _almost_ believes him.

He turns his PADD so she can see what is on it, and sure enough, there is a statistical matrix of some complexity and several simulated wire-frame floorplans scattered over the screen.

She also notices a Starfleet graduation ring on his right middle finger.

A sour rush of embarrassment replaces her dread.

"I. . . I'm sorry. . ." she says, flustered, "A strange man, without kids but _looking _at them, in this place. . . it's just. . . well. . . it's enough to set all my warning bells ringing - you know?" She knows she is blushing dark enough to show beneath her skin.

He ignores her embarrassment, and indicates he understands with a small nod of his head.

He hasn't claimed to be Vulcan, but it is a very Vulcan gesture - precise, but non-committal.

He goes up to 15%. Above red-line, non-hostile, but still to be strictly watched.

She bends and kisses four-year-old Kal, telling her to remember to share her cookies, and then she picks up two-year-old Senek, telling him to remember to be nice to the other boys, and they nod and grin and scamper off to play.

"Your youngest is part Vulcan, I see."

She cringes. He slides back down to 7%. Why does everyone feel it necessary to point out her son's differentness? It isn't _her_ fault. . .

"Actually, part Romulan," she says, pertly, just to see his reaction.

He does not start, or seem at all shocked or disgusted - in fact he barely reacts at all - but his next statement proves he is quite curious.

"His _name_ is Vulcan."

"Well, yes. . ." She pauses, and her voice drops. The way she got Senek has been the deal-breaker for every relationship she has had in the last two years, and not just the romantic ones. . . "I do not care to remember his father."

He nods and accepts her explanation without a single question. He looks steadily at her, without emotion, though his eyes are still intense somehow. The look is strange, she cannot define it, but it is not predatory.

That alone suddenly puts him up to 19.5%. If he takes the hint and leaves now, she will condescend to round it up to 20%.

Instead, he quirks an eyebrow at her.

Somewhere, in a piece of her mind she cannot control, he soars up to 35%.

* * *

Over the next two months, he always seems to cross her path. Whether she is going to her evening Sublight Communications classes, or her early morning Phonology classes, he always seems to be there.

He's unobtrusive, but he's also impossible to ignore.

The memory of him has been hovering in her mind too - an encounter with a man that was almost twenty percent acceptable? (Or even more than that, her mind forces her to recall.) Unheard of.

Well, unheard of for _her_.

At least recently.

If by "recently", you meant the past few years, that is.

_Oh, hell. . ._

She rounds the corner of the Xenolinguistics building, and there he is again.

_Enough is enough_.

She walks boldly over to him, adopts her most bitchy posture, and asks him sarcastically if he wants to walk her home, seeing as he's stalking her anyway.

His eyes narrow a little. Warily, he says he _does_ want to walk her home, but that he hoped no one _ever_ stalked her.

The tone of his voice implies he would take violent action against any such person.

All the sarcasm drains from her, suddenly, like dry sand between gentle, open fingers.

"My apartment is this way," she says, more subdued than she would be if he had Nerve Pinched her.

She lets him fall into step with her, but she does not speak to him for many minutes. She either has to get rid of this guy, quickly, or let him in a little, let him see her, let him know her.

At the moment, she isn't sure which prospect frightens her more.

"I was raped," she says, finally, in a hard tone meant to scare him off, "by someone who stalked me for weeks beforehand."

"A Romulan," he says. It is not a question, and he says it entirely without emotion.

"Yes. Three years ago. Eight blocks that way." She points downtown. "He said he. . . _deserved_ to. . ." she gulps in air, and forces herself to continue, "To. . . _have_. . . me. . . before he destroyed my planet. I assume he died when Pike and Kirk went on that suicide mission to destroy his ship."

She doesn't have to say which Pike and Kirk, of course. Everyone knows how they died to save Vulcan.

"I didn't even know his _name_ until. . . after. . . and. . . sometimes I. . ." her voice catches, almost unable to say aloud what she thought of doing nearly every day of her pregnancy with Senek. "Sometimes I. . . even now. . . wish I had died without _ever_ knowing his name. . ."

She stops. She has never opened up to anyone like this before. No one has ever proved capable of hearing the story without shaming her until now. But he is not radiating the disapproval that practically all the other people she has ever told about the incident do. Not even her _father_ has ever been this supportive and understanding.

"I ought to have gone with them," he says, quietly, interrupting her thoughts. "Pike and Kirk. I was slated to do so, but circumstances conspired for me to stay behind." He pauses, his cheeks ever so slightly flushed with green. "I am glad _now_ that I did not go, but it was many months before I allowed myself to be."

She is glad of this too, in a way. They are _both_ guilty of surviving.

He says nothing more, for a very long time.

When they reach her apartment, she does not invite him in, even though that pesky piece of her mind screams in genuine agony at the thought of losing sight of him.

"My name is Spock," he says, so matter-of-factly that it takes her a second to register the meaning of the words, "I am head of the Physics Department."

He turns and leaves.

She aches to follow.

* * *

The first time he asks her on a date, she says no. Anyone who can make her open up like that, _and _make her forget to rate every male she sees by their percentage of resemblance/non-resemblance to Nero, just by _being_ near her - that is a man who can hurt her far, far more than she can stand. And after three years of nearly unmitigated stress, just when her life seems to finally belong to her again? No.

No, no, _no_.

He nods, ignoring the frantic look that fleets through her expression before she can stop it, and asks if he might be allowed to continue accompanying her home from the Academy.

He's the Professor of Interstellar Physics. She's a Communications major.

There's no conflict of interest.

She lets him walk her home every night for the whole semester. And the next one too.

By the end of the winter term, they are spending _hours_ of every night talking just outside her apartment door.

He never asks for more.

Suddenly, she is determined to _make_ him ask to come in.

In the end, it is easy. While they are outside talking, Senek has a bad dream, and wakes up crying. She bolts inside, leaving the door wide open. When she comes back into the kitchen, with a temporarily soothed little boy draped over her shoulder, he asks if he might come in to help.

She nods yes.

He spends literally the rest of the night reading _Goodnight Moon_ to Senek.

When he waves to her as she goes off to the Academy the next morning, she knows she'll never forget the sight of him, Senek curled up asleep on his chest, and the dawn light gleaming in those shockingly beautiful brown eyes.

* * *

The second time he asks her on a date, he makes sure he specifies that it is a _lunch _date, and that he'll meet her there if she wants - and that the place he has chosen is outdoors, bright, very public, and very popular.

She pauses a second before she says yes.

Anyone who has been this politely persistent over a woman he barely knows, deserves at the very least to know she isn't stringing him along.

Even though she's not _entirely_ sure that isn't exactly what she's doing. . .

The restaurant he has chosen is the city's most popular BBQ place. He pushes the chair in behind her, making no comment on the piles of bones and skin and fat and other refuse that lie all over the tables around them. He is willing to brave the constant smell of roasted meat, just to facilitate her comfort?

If he wasn't a 90% before, he is now.

He orders a platter of grilled vegetables, and never says anything else about it.

He speaks knowledgeably about languages. Anyone so steeped in the use and repair of a ship's sensors would have to be, of course, but he speaks several languages himself, and they often converse in Italian, or L'jeeman, or Swahili, or Vulcan, and sometimes they don't know what language they are using, unless it is some private pastiche of their own.

She listens to the rich baritone roll of his voice during the day, and can't help herself from imagining him using it to an entirely different effect at night.

She isn't certain when interacting with him became one of the most desirable activities in her life, second only to being with her kids, but there he sits, smart, placid, gorgeous, and focused fully on her. Much more of this and he will make her forget that she is damaged goods.

"I find your company to be the most satisfactory of all my acquaintances as well, Nyota," he says, picking up on her projected feelings, as usual.

She's used to it now, if not exactly fully comfortable with it.

_Yet._

"I guess that means there will be a second date?"

His eyebrow quirks and his mouth twitches, and she is sure that if he was Human, he'd be laughing.

* * *

The kids accept him like he's their older brother, not someone who is going out with their mom. He brings them ingenious toys and mentally challenging games, and one night, he even cancels a dinner reservation because Kaliah wants them to stay in and have them watch a puppet show she wrote herself. Its a very silly fairy tale production, full of princesses and knights and big clumsy battles and horribly immature love scenes, and as they watch, Nyota cringes to think what his opinion must be of her as a parent. He _can't_ approve of old socks festooned with tinsel being used in such a manner, she's sure. About nine languages are sprinkled throughout the trite script too, and for a grand finale Senek pops five or six party crackers into the air, exulting with an ancient Vulcan battle cry.

She tries not to be embarrassed.

But, he actually says he _enjoyed_ it, and tells Kal that her imagination and creativity show very interesting promise, and that she should continue to invest her time in such productions. He even compliments Senek on his pronunciation of several Vulcan words.

The most shocking thing is that she can feel that he _means_ it.

He's an empath, she realizes, as if for the first time. He _can't_ hide what he means, no matter how emotionless his voice gets.

After that, she doesn't deflect his questions about her daughter, and she finds herself telling him about the. . . _jerk_. . . who for two years had called himself her husband, but ran off when he found out about Senek.

He clenches his teeth and says a very rude Klingon word. He clearly means it, too.

For the first time in over three years, she actually laughs comfortably in the presence of a man.

She's never, _ever_ had a 98% before, but there he is, laughing in his own way, being _wonderful_ to her kids, and. . . and. . .

That night, she dreams about him for the first time.

* * *

They've been dating six months, and she can feel herself falling so in love it scares her.

He's never tried to touch her, not even a little, but then, he's Vulcan, so she's not entirely sure what that means.

How much does he want her? How much does she want him? Can he even _tell_ that she wants him? Does _his_ want extend to her mind? What would touching him even be _like_? She knows touch-telepathy is a really big thing, so any touch at all would be a _huge_ step, but he's Vulcan, so he must have some kind of mental shields, right? He could hold her hand if he really _wanted_ to.

Right?

Then, one day, they are walking along the Presidio, and he tells her he's only _half _Vulcan, and gives her a little bit of his own history. He's been bullied, abused really, for most of his life. His relationship with his father, while not exactly broken, is tenuous at best, for his father sees the choice to join Starfleet as about as close to betraying the Vulcan way of life as Spock could possibly come without actually killing another Vulcan.

For the first time, she understands_ why _he might actually want her.

Additionally, he talks about being a hybrid, and how, very possibly, he is incapable of genetic reproduction.

Then, he mentions a. . . thing. . . a Vulcan word she does not know - a curse, he calls it.

Apparently, Vulcans are not all that they seem.

He is only half Vulcan. . . but even that may not be enough to prevent. . .

He talks for a whole hour, while she repays all the courtesies he has given her, and listens to him without questions, and without judgement.

Then, he stops, turns to her, and says, very plainly - "I would understand if this information would lead you to decide to terminate our relationship."

Her heart is beating so much faster than normal that she cannot speak, not for a long time.

"No," she finally whispers, "I can't let you die when. . . when _I_ could. . . could. . ."

She doesn't know how she holds back tears, but she does.

He stays away for two weeks after that, and she is grateful to him.

* * *

One morning he takes her for coffee, and she breaks down when she sees him removing the tea bag from his pot of hot water.

It was the last gasp of the horrible memories, she supposed. At least, she _hoped_ it was.

For certain, she was _not_ going to tell him why a tea bag was a trigger for her.

Her husband had been _such_ a jerk.

He is entirely confused at why she is crying about his breakfast, but again he asks no questions, throws the whole thing away, and takes her to a place that serves only Betazoid food, and the bright orange drinks and purple pastries bear no resemblance to the tea and scone that had upset her.

And then, for the first time, she feels _his_ emotional projections. She can feel peace, and affection, and care, just _rolling_ off of him. In a Betazoid restaurant, he doesn't have to hold back. She basks in the comforting feelings.

He doesn't touch her, doesn't say anything, and doesn't ask anything, yet again.

She never wants to explain herself.

He doesn't seem to need her to.

* * *

He's been planning this afternoon's outing for weeks. He's been telling her that it's a surprise, that she must dress especially nice, and that there will most likely even be pictures taken so Kal and Senek can see what happened that night.

He's built up the date so much, she's almost afraid he's going to propose.

She really, really wants him to.

But the babysitter can't come tonight.

She's called everywhere, to all the places she trusts, and no one, not even Gaila, her last resort, can watch the kids tonight. Tomorrow night, yes, but not tonight. Starfleet does not postpone field training simulations because two people want to go on a date.

She wants to smash the communicator against the wall, but that would upset the kids, so she doesn't.

Most of all, though, she wants to call him, and spill all her frustration at him, just so she can feel his calm covering her again.

But, that would be so many different kinds of counter-productive that it just isn't funny.

She dresses up, in a glittering gold sheath-dress and heels she bought just for him. As she applies her eyeliner, she hopes, almost against hope, that her looks will soften the blow she's about to give him, but her stomach will not let go of the dreadful conviction that he's going to spin on his heel and leave her forever when she tells him just how much she does not want to leave her kids alone tonight.

He shows up, in a tux. A _tux-e-do. _With a golden cummerbund, a yellow carnation boutonniere, and a sheaf of matching carnations clearly meant for her. She's never seen a man wearing a tux before. Her ex didn't even wear one to the wedding. For a solid ten seconds she can do nothing but stare, her mouth hanging wide open.

She doesn't feel too bad about it, because he's staring at her pretty hard too.

Then, he hands her the flowers, and she can't put it off any longer.

She takes a deep breath and tells him she can't make it, and why.

He blinks.

She looks away.

When she gathers enough courage to look again, she can see gears whirring in his head, and of course, _of course_ he would have a backup plan, why didn't she think of that?

He bows, like some impossibly perfect gentleman, gallantly taking her hand in his, and kissing it.

She makes no mistake. It's a real kiss.

She hasn't been touched so sweetly. . . _ever_.

His mind brushes up against hers. . . and it's _wonderful_.

She has to close her eyes to catch her breath.

"Perhaps, Nyota," says that inimitable baritone, "You should simply _bring our children_."

She stares at him, speechless. He is smiling with that eyebrow of his.

"We are, after all, only going to the zoo."

It is a good half-minute before she remembers her children's names, what speech is, or how to walk.

He waits silently, but never lowers that bemused eyebrow.

She'd hate him if she didn't love him so much.

Two hours later, the kids are sticky with ice cream, and running circles around both of them they're so hyper. Both his tux and her gown are smeared with petting zoo food, all of their shoes are filthy from dozens of animal's droppings, and a few suspicious wisps of straw are sticking out of her hair from a very brief but incredibly intense makeout session against a haystack.

They are walking past a smelly cage full of exotic Amazonian birds, and suddenly he is on one knee, proposing.

As she says yes, she decides that no date has _ever_ been more romantic.

He hands her a ring, but more importantly, he touches his fingers to her face. Softly, oh, ever so gently, he links their minds.

It's so amazing she hardly knows what to do with it.

_He's mine_, she thinks, exultantly. _Thoroughly, totally and completely - mine_.

_Yes_, comes a very cautious thought across the fledgeling bond. _I am._

Though she accepts the mental touch without flinching, it's still going to take a _lot_ of getting used to.

_And what about me?_ She wonders, suddenly anxious about the state of her insides. After all that she's been through, what does her _soul _look like? What color is her spirit? Next to _his_? They might both be survivors, but he's never been. . . _soiled_. She cowers for a minute. How can he _possibly_. . .

Before she descends into panic, some instinct lets her touch the link.

_Spock. . . am. . . am I. . . acceptable? To you?  
_

He reaches out to touch two of his fingers to hers, and she feels him smile in her mind.

_One hundred percent._

* * *

=/\=

* * *

**Note to everyone who has asked if there is going to be more -** Firstly, thank you all SO MUCH for the very kind reviews y'all have been leaving. They warm my little geeky heart. Secondly, well. . . Given that I never even intended to expand the original drabble, and the inspiration to do so just kind of pounced on my consciousness one day, what you see here is all there is. For now, at least. (I need to get back to The Tides Of Vulcan, after all. . . ;) BUT! A two-part follow-up _has_ occurred to me. In the first part, Spock and Nyota would have to get over the honeymoon jitters and so on, but that's been written so many times, I'm not sure I really want to think about it again. Of course, as far as I know, it has never been done with Nyota in this exact state - damaged, with kids, and all. Eh - I may be struck by lightening and just have to write it one day. And the second part would be all about Senek and this AU's version of Spock Prime. When you realize that, in this version of the story, Senek is Nero's biological son, well, that would give Spock Prime a rather perfect ambassadorial angle on the Romulans/Neutral Zone etc., wouldn't it? Anyway, you can guess where I could go with that. No idea when, or if, I'll get to it, but just in case, this story is going to keep its "incomplete" status for the time being. Hope that clears things up.

Cheers and salutations!

Emma


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